An iconic festive house is lighting up the area after a family spent weeks putting up thousands of decorations.

Susan and John Skinner, who put on an amazing Christmas lights show every year at their house in North View Street, Carr Vale, hosted a grand switch-on to a crowd of over 50 fans.

Susan Griffiths with John and Wayne Skinner outside their North View Street home in Carr Vale, raising money for Cardiac Risk in the Young. Pictures by Anne Shelley.

Susan, 58, a former care worker, said: “It was great. The street was crowded, you couldn’t move.”

And it took close to eight weeks to arrange the ‘masses’ of lights, which Susan said she can’t put a value on, but they fill a whole shipping container when they go into storage after Christmas.

She added: “Everyone helps out to put them up. We’ve got Santa Claus, snowmen and some lights which were originally used for the Blackpool display.”

The family started putting on their big lights show for charity 14 years ago when they started attracting donations from residents.

Susan added: “We had a few things on the house and people kept chucking money on the garden so we said we might as well start doing it for charity and we’ve done it ever since, choosing a different good cause each time.”

This year they are helping Cardiac Risk in the Young charity, inspired by a friend of their son Wayne – 27-year-old Rachael Williams – who died of an unexplained heart failure in January.

Susan added: “We set a record last year with £1,900 so we hope to break that this year.”

And the proud mum praised her son Wayne’s efforts. He puts his programming skills to good use to bring the house alive with a precisely timed light-show on the matrix board.